Captain George W. Bradley, A.Q.M., and the Bradley Base Ball Clubs, Revised

Authors

Mark E. Eberle, Fort Hays State UniversityFollow

Files

DOI

10.58809/FPAZ2104

Date

2025

Abstract

George W. Bradley served as a quartermaster for the New York Volunteers during the US Civil War. After the war, he became an assistant quartermaster (A.Q.M.) in the regular army with the rank of captain. Captain Bradley served at several posts, mostly in the West. While serving at Fort Harker, Kansas in 1867 and at Fort Union, New Mexico in 1868, teams from the forts were organized under the name Bradley Base Ball Club (BBC). In Kansas, the Bradley BBC defeated the Smoky Hill BBC from Ellsworth, but in New Mexico, they lost to the Santa Fe BBC in a game played at Las Vegas. The contest in Las Vegas is currently the earliest documented game played by two clubs from distant localities in New Mexico. Captain Bradley was transferred to Philadelphia in 1880, where he passed away in 1882 at age 51. His daughter, Kate Mickles Bradley, and her mother, Agnes, eventually moved to Washington, DC. Kate became well known as a professional art model and a teacher and performer of the Delsarte method of expression, which influenced acting and modern dance. Agnes and Kate both passed away in New York in 1920 and were buried with George in Arlington National Cemetery. This essay was originally published in 2020 and has undergone revisions and corrections for its release in 2025 as part of the five-volume anthology Peeking through the Knothole. The open-access, digital version of this essay is available through the “Download” button on this webpage. The print-on-demand version is available through the “Buy this Book” button for volume one of the anthology (Essays on Baseball Origins in the West, 1858–1883).

Keywords

Fort Harker, Fort Union, Kansas baseball, New Mexico baseball, Ellsworth baseball, Santa Fe baseball, Delsarte, Kate Mickles Bradley.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.

Rights

© The Author (s)

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For questions contact ScholarsRepository@fhsu.edu

Originally Published 2020

Revised Edition 2025

Recommended Citation

Eberle, Mark E., "Captain George W. Bradley, A.Q.M., and the Bradley Base Ball Clubs, Revised" (2025). Monographs. 15.
DOI: 10.58809/FPAZ2104
Available at: https://scholars.fhsu.edu/all_monographs/15